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Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?

Henry Kissinger

In effect, none of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with the multi-state system that is emerging. Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many different perceptions, or on so global a scale.
HENRY KISSINGER

Experience Important World
The art of crisis management is to raise the stakes to where the adversary will not follow, but in a manner that avoids a tit for tat.
HENRY KISSINGER

Art Avoid Revenge
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Nation Reality
The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
HENRY KISSINGER

Absence Mindset
A country whose security depends on producing a genius in each generation sets itself a task no society has ever met.
HENRY KISSINGER

Genius Security
The goal of the tribute system was to foster deference, not to extract economic benefit or to dominate foreign societies militarily.
HENRY KISSINGER

Goal Oppression
The task of the leader is to get his people from where they are to where they have not been.
HENRY KISSINGER

Himself Leadership Nation People
in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.
HENRY KISSINGER

Choice Important Reputation Worth
There can’t be a crisis next week, my schedule is already full.
HENRY KISSINGER

Funny Future
A more immediate issue concerns North Korea, to which Bismarck’s nineteenth-century aphorism surely applies: We live in a wondrous time, in which the strong is weak because of his scruples and the weak grows strong because of his audacity.
HENRY KISSINGER

Growth Issue Live Strong Time Weakness Wonderful
in international affairs a reputation for reliability is a more important asset than demonstrations of tactical cleverness.
HENRY KISSINGER

Important Reputation Worth
The nice thing about being a celebrity is that if you bore people they think it’s their fault.
HENRY KISSINGER

Funny Mistake People Thinking Yourself
The mindset for walking lonely political paths may not be self-evident to those who seek confirmation by hundreds, sometimes thousands of friends on Facebook.
HENRY KISSINGER

Evidence Friendship Lonely Mindset Path Walk
History knows no resting places and no plateaus
HENRY KISSINGER

History Nature Place
The Art of War articulates a doctrine less of territorial conquest than of psychological dominance; it was the way the North Vietnamese fought America.
HENRY KISSINGER

Art Fight War
Americans hold that every problem has a solution; Chinese think that each solution is an admission ticket to a new set of problems.
HENRY KISSINGER

Perspective Problem Thinking

Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?

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Can governmental orders be invented from scratch by intelligent thinkers, or is the range of choice limited by underlying organic and cultural realities (the Burkean view)?

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